anime on CBN in the '80s

Let's Anime takes a look at the Japanese cartoon programming given us by the Christian Broadcasting Network in that confusing decade, the 1980s. Leo The Lion, Honey Honey, and even a little bit of Mazinger Z, all courtesy CBN.

Otaku Type "A"

inspired by REAL-LIFE EVENTS, namely people I saw walking around the food court while eating breakfast Sunday morning (afternoon) at Ohayocon.

jesus christ conquers the martians

Every week thrill to new adventures of brave, foul-mouthed Earthmen struggling against the onslaught of attacks from Mars! Yes, in an attempt to keep up-to-the-five-years-ago minute, I'm doing a web-comic. JESUS CHRIST CONQUERS THE MARTIANS will get updates every Sunday; two or three strips each week until the story is finished, which should be sometime around Christmas. I can promise thrills, excitement, cuss words, naked women, and the technological terror of the Brickosaurus X-7, all in thrilling black and white! Don't miss it!

JESUS CHRIST CONQUERS THE MARTIANS!!!

Superman Meets The Quik Bunny

It's a battle of the titans as two of the world's mightiest champions defy each other for mastery of the universe itself, the only way they know how - in a chocolate milk drinking contest.

Catch the excitement as Superman Meets The Quik Bunny- at Mister Kitty's Stupid Comics!

anime I hated: Magical Meow Meow Taruto

Magical Meow Meow Taruto. Where to begin? I would not recommend this anime to children, adults, human beings of any age, sex, nationality, creed, religion or culture. 
Taruto is a soulless piece of junk. It is entirely bereft of entertainment value on every conceivable level. Its characters are so thin as to be invisible when viewed from the side. Its art style is bland, imitative, and completely unoriginal. To call the show's plot "half-baked" would be a compliment that implies some degree of preparation or labor went into its creation, which is of course impossible. Here's a hint; it involves a magical princess who has magical powers, who is also a cat girl. Just think; people got paid to come up with this. No wonder the commies think we're soft.
The show's big stroke of genius is that it stars cats. Only they aren't cats, they're little girls who wear frilly dresses and have cat ears and tails. Fully-formed homonoculi with stockings and petticoats who are about a foot and a half tall, who wander around the house chasing bugs and eating cat food. The regular human characters in Taruto see these cat-people as just regular cats. Are they regular cats with stockings and frilly dresses and jewellery? Or are they regular cats who shit in boxes and cough up hairballs? We'll never know. 
And here's where the show made its gigantic mistake. If Taruto had starred actual cats, cartoon cats who talk and have adventures and magical powers, then that would have been cute and funny, like Hamtaro, an international success enjoyed by children and adults alike. However, Taruto stars eighteen-inch tall cat girls, a plot device that can only appeal to... well, let's face it. It appeals to pedophiles, and maybe furries. If you're a pedophile, or maybe a furry, you may find this show to be so amazingly arousing it could conceivably distract you from any sexual assaults you may be planning, which may actually be this show's only redeeming characteristic.



Because there's nothing else to this show. The title character is a magical cat girl princess who is being chased by evil cat boys and cat girls from the magical cat-people dimension, and her owner, a brain-damaged pretty boy without a job or parents, moves into a gigantic house in a new neighborhood full of other cat-girls. That's it; that's the story. Eighteen-inch-tall girls wander around yards, drink milk and eat cookies and try out their magical powers, and occasionally the evil cat people report to their evil commander about how they've failed to catch the magical cat girl princess.

This show is thin on plot, even for episodes that are a mere 20 minutes long. 20 minutes! I've seen fistfights in movies that were longer and more entertaining. I've seen goddamn INFORMERCIALS where more happened. I've owned CEREAL BOXES that were fresher and more innovative. Go out to your car, open the glove box, take out your owner's manual, and read the part about how often you should change your oil and where the transmission fluid filter is, and you will have already entertained yourself up to a hundred and fifty times more than Taruto will ever entertain you. This is not a show that children will enjoy. There are no gags, a total of zero characters the audience will identify with or feel sympathy for, and nothing to mention in the way of story (story in episode 1: we moved into a new house. Is there a monster in the house? No, there is not a monster in the house. The end).

Maybe as the show progresses, it gets better. And maybe monkeys will learn to fly and pigs will live in trees, too. I'll never know. I only managed to watch an episode and a half of this atrocity; I love my eyes and my brain and can only justify torturing them in the name of anime reviewing for so long before common decency cries out "ENOUGH!" But who can say? Maybe in episode three every single character is brutally murdered by escaped convicts from an experimental prison where they treat recidivism with nuclear radiation, and the remainder of the series is replaced with reruns of episodes of Laverne and Shirley in Japanese - a scenario that, in comparison to the undoubtedly excremental remainder of Taruto, offers unparalleled vistas of television fun.


It's not even a good-looking show; usually even the most brain-dead anime show has slick character designs or zippy direction or some other redeeming visual quality. Not here. The characters all have big, dead, staring, fake CLAMP eyeballs, are thin as rails, and either wear little girl minidresses or frilly fake gothic lolita fetish maid wear. All the cat-girl characters are straight out of the stock catalog of harem-show girls. There's nothing visual about Taruto that separates it from two hundred and fifty million other anime shows, computer dating games, and telephone card advertisements.

As an exercise in just how little can actually happen in a single episode of a TV series, Taruto may have merit. And of course I already mentioned that the show might inadvertently be aiding society by keeping sexual predators off the streets and in front of their television sets. But by any standard of normal judgement - as entertainment, as storytelling, as camp, as kitsch, as cautionary example, as some sort of multi-colored distraction to prevent you from changing the channel- Taruto is a miserable, shocking failure.

I might add as a personal note that it is particularly insulting for Bandai to waste valuable resources on this dreck while Giant Gorg, a vastly superior series, languishes unreleased. Shame on you, Bandai Entertainment.

anime I hated: Robotech The Sentinels

Robotech II: The Sentinels is terrible.

The success of the syndicated anime TV series Robotech in the mid 80s meant there was a built-in audience of fans eager to see "the saga" continue, and in 1988 it looked like this was about to happen, with the videocassette release of  Robotech II: The Sentinels.  For a few moments, as fans placed the tape into their VCRs and pressed "play" and waited for the show to begin, it seemed as if all their wishes had come true. Then the video itself started and those hopes came crashing down. Because, as I said, Robotech II: The Sentinels is terrible.

Rather than being edited together, rewritten, and assembled from disparate elements, as the original Robotech series was, The Sentinels was concieved and commissioned from the get-go by Harmony Gold.  Yet due to production problems and various financing crises, The Sentinels we eventually wound up getting was, yes, edited together and rewritten.  As it happens, the original plan to create a 65 episode television series ran into problems when the Plaza Accords revalued the Japanese yen, taking what had at one time been cheaply produced Japanese animation and turning it into more expensively produced Japanese animation. The price tag on The Sentinels ballooned and sponsor Matchbox pulled out, leaving Harmony Gold with a mere three episodes of usable footage. This, along with material from the original Robotech television series, is what we get in our Sentinels. 

The characters, old and new, are distressingly ugly, with a disturbing proportion being old men with terrible hair who are given way too much screen time. Many scenes are merely the backs of  heads or helmeted characters, saving the trouble of animating mouths. As a bonus the audience does get to see the mysterious alien enemies The Invid, who are giant slugs who talk to giant brains. There is a very long scene solely composed of a giant slug talking to a giant brain.

Now, I watched and enjoyed the original Robotech TV series, and I can assure you that this show was not a success because it featured scenes of giant slugs talking to giant brains; it was a success because it featured transforming robot fighter planes, well-animated action scenes, and cute girl singers. Robotech II: The Sentinels has none of this. All the returning characters are uglier and have stupider hair, and the new characters are also ugly and have stupid hair. Popular Robotech singing star Minmay sings once - as part of a duet!! - and we mostly see the backs of their heads. There are dismaying amounts of wrinkled old guys with amazing hairpieces who grind out huge chunks of expository dialog in fake accents. There are two - count 'em, 2 - scenes with transforming robot fighter planes, both of which are training missions. There's a confusing subplot involving a planet on the other side of the galaxy, which may or may not be the home of the Robotech Masters, which is being invaded by the Invid and/or overrun by robot dogs. Again, not something audiences were clamoring for. 

In fact, the story is this: Rick and Lisa and the remaining characters from the Macross part of Robotech go to a space station, where they walk around in terrible new uniforms and talk. Talk talk talk. Rick and Lisa get married. Apparently they are going to launch the SDF3 and go to the homeworld of the Robotech Masters, whoever they are, and ask them why they did what they did whenever they did it. Meanwhile on that self-same Robotech Masters homeworld, old guys in robes (the thrilling Robotech Masters themselves) watch robot dogs prowl a futuristic ruined city. This alien city was destroyed by the alien Invid - different aliens, mind you -  in what would have been the first episode of a Sentinels TV series.  However, being the only interesting thing happening in the three existing episodes, the Invid attack was placed at the climax of Robotech II: The Sentinels, resulting in many scenes of boring bald old robe-wearing Robotech Masters staring at video screens of a ruined planet that, according to the new edit, hasn't actually been ruined yet.



After what seems like an eternity of scenes of hairy nobodies staring at computer screens, the robot dogs overrun the capital city and the hairy nobodies escape into a shelter, where they stare at computer screens some more. Oh, and a giant slug talks to a giant brain.

Robotech II: The Sentinels definitely feels like a failed pilot for a TV series; there are even blackouts for commercial breaks. I don't blame Robotech creator Carl Macek for trying to continue his one successful franchise, sure, fine, whatever. But why Streamline would re-release it years later is anybody's guess. I usually try not to emphasize my mistakes.  

Robotech is a franchise that spawned novels, comic books, games,  a large toy line, and a fandom that continues to this day.  What it hasn't spawned is a satisfying sequel. Not that people won't stop trying. Hollywood continues to option Robotech for feature films, Harmony Gold monopolizes the Macross brand in North America, and the hope of more sequels always springs eternal. My hope is that it won't be another Sentinels. 

-D. Merrill

the witch doctor versus the purple people eater

Bagdasarian vs Wooley: WHO WILL WIN